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Jamie McCrimmon
Raised by a member of the Free States, Jamie McCrimmon began to question their beliefs and practices as she grew. Following a chance encounter, she left the group to join the Appalachian Brotherhood of Steel, feeling that they could do more to Appalachia then the Free States ever would. History Jamie was born in 2066 to a poor family in Charlestown, the capitol of the Appalachian district. Both of her parents were hard working, and yet only earned enough for them to get by as the economic situation in the region worsened. In 2071, her mother, Kathy, was killed in a car accident. The loss affected her and her father, Buck, deeply, but the pair showed it in different ways. Jamie became somewhat withdrawn, avoiding others, including children of her own age as she started in school. This left her socially isolated, and often struggling with interactions. Buck, on the other hand, began drinking heavily. At first he would simply come home from work and then start drinking while paying less and less attention to his daughter. Then he began drinking at work during his lunch break, and eventually began sneaking drinks whenever he could. While he did his best to hide his obvious addiction, it soon began to severely affect him. One by one, his friends began to cut off contact with him as they realised just how self-destructive he had become. In mid-2076 the inevitable occurred, with Buck fired from his factory job after being caught drinking at work. However, he refused to take responsibility for his actions, and blamed the company for wanting to replace him with a robot. Now with all the time in the world on his hands, Buck took to writing angry letters and manifestos to the Charlestown Herald and anyone else who would listen to him about how the government was taking people’s jobs and could no longer be trusted and how the region’s plans for automation were a front for some sinister government plot. One thing led to another, with Buck falling in with the nascent Free States movement in Appalachia. Managing to stay sober enough to attend some of their meetings, he found himself agreeing more and more with their sentiments. In early 2077, he sold the family’s home and all their belongings and took Jamie out of school (claiming they were ‘brainwashing’ her with ‘fake news’ and ‘alternative facts’), and moved across to the eastern side of the state. Once there, he used what money he had to buy in to a Free States communal bunker where he and Jamie would be safe from what many saw as being inevitable. In order to be accepted, knowing that everyone within the Free States had to pull their weight, he even sobered up and did his best to apply himself. Both he and Jamie, now eleven, were trained in hunting, trapping, survival, construction, repairs and a variety of other skills that would be needed once civilisation collapsed and the Free States would have nobody to rely on but themselves. On October 23rd, 2077, the Great War began and ended. Having prepared themselves as best they could, the Free States retreated into their bunkers to ride out the end of the world, waiting until the day that they would emerge. Even though she and her father were a part of a communal bunker, Jamie was again left socially isolated due to the few other children among the Free States’ members. Instead, she spent much of her time buried in books, doing her best to prepare as best as she could for the day that they would emerge. Even with all their preparation, life once the Free States returned to the surface. Mutated wildlife, diseases, radiation storms and other hazards meant that the skills that Jamie and Buck had learned would be put to the test, even with the aid of the other Free States members. Other events well beyond their control made conditions even more harsh for them. Some unknown event caused the plant life of the region to further mutate, with aggressive red vines soon invading and slowly taking over the region, transforming it into a dense swamp. Soon the region came to be known as the Mire, becoming even more hazardous to its inhabitants. Unfortunately, Buck’s response to these problems was to start drinking again. Although it began gradually, soon he was frequently getting drunk off the readily available moonshine made by other Free States members. Again when drunk, he took to blaming everyone else for his misfortunes, not the least of which was his long-dead wife. Soon he decided that she had ‘betrayed’ him by giving him a daughter rather than a son, and decided that he needed to ‘fix’ this problem. Consequentially, his behavior towards her became even more emotionally abusive, referring to her only as ‘James’, cutting her hair and so on. While Jamie did her best to separate herself from her father, she found that the rest of the Free States members were not too much more appealing. Besides their growing paranoia and reluctance to deal with anyone outside the organisation, as well as internal rivalries between different groups, there were other issues that were beginning to rise to the surface. The most prominent of these was the so-called Ghoul problem. While everyone in the Free States were aware of Ghouls as mindless monsters who were driven mad by radiation, there were those that claimed that there were ‘intelligent’ ghouls that were still lucid and were merely just normal people who had been unfortunate enough to be mutated by radiation. Others claimed that the ‘intelligent’ ghouls were plague carriers and still a threat that needed to be exterminated. Jamie tried to remain outside the debate, but it became clear that neutrality was never going to be an option. Matters came to a head in 2083 when Jamie was a part of a hunting party that also included Buck and some of his friends. The group blundered into an ambush set by a group of raiders that they should have been able to avoid had Buck been sober. Pinned down, they were only saved by the unexpected intervention of a third party; a group of soldiers, one of which was wearing a suit of Power Armour. Having driven off the Raiders, the group introduced themselves as a patrol from the Brotherhood of Steel, a group Jamie had heard of, but never met first-hand. She was immediately awed by their presence and wanted to know more about them; who they were, where they came from, where they got their advanced technology and so on. However, Buck forbade her from having any contact with them, claiming that the Brotherhood were a continuation of the same government that had destroyed the world and had driven them to join the Free States in the first place. However, she remained unconvinced, instead feeling that the Brotherhood represented a far better option than living in a mutated swamp for the rest of her life. In mid-2083 she decided that she’d had enough of Buck, his emotional abuse, his growing paranoia and his drinking. Taking a chance, and following the few cues she had, Jamie headed south out of the Mire, towards Watoga. While she knew enough to avoid the fallen city, she also knew that the Brotherhood had a presence in the region. Sure enough, after several days of travel and living off the land, she was found by a Brotherhood patrol. Jamie immediately surrendered to them, claiming that she wanted to join their ranks. After a quick medical at a nearby field base, she was dispatched to Camp Venture for training. One of the things she found there surprised her; she was not the only Free States member to have left home to join the Brotherhood, nor were they the only outsiders. She found a few members of the Responders there as well, a group she’d had only fleeting contact with in past. While the Brotherhood’s training was demanding, the skills that Jamie had learned with the Free States saw her succeed and join their ranks. Her knowledge soon proved invaluable as the Brotherhood extended their reach further north into the mire, taking several key sites such as the Thunder Mountain power station and dam in order to secure vital infrastructure. While there were no overt hostilities between the Brotherhood and the Free States (the two groups having a tentative alliance), Jamie couldn’t help but be wary of her former people. Having experienced life among them first hand, it was hard not to see them as extremists and somewhat irrational. Personality For all her life, Jamie was rather withdrawn and introverted, a consequence of both her mother’s death and her father’s relentless bullying. She tended towards being a loner, although she was smart enough to know that the hazards of life in the post-war world meant that isolationism was a bad idea. While she would work with others in duties such as hunting or patrols, Jamie tried to avoid social entanglements. Despite this, she had several short-lived boyfriends, much to her father’s chagrin. It was not until she joined the Brotherhood that she began to emerge from her shell, becoming somewhat more open and engaged with others. The Brotherhood gave her a sense of purpose and belonging that she had otherwise been lacking as a part of the Free States, which in turn encouraged her to open up. She gladly engaged with her fellow soldiers, forming a number of friendships during her time in the Brotherhood. She came to see Luisa Merino as something of a mentor figure, akin to an older sister that she never had. Jamie was dedicated to the Brotherhood and to protecting the people of Appalachia. While she didn’t like the idea of demanding supplies, she also felt that it was necessary in order to contain the Scorchbeasts and prevent their spread. She did, however, have a dislike for the leadership of the Free States, perhaps a backlash from her own upbringing among them. She would fight to her very last against the Scorchbeasts, not regretting it for one moment. Appearance While never particularly pretty, Jamie was (despite her father’s best efforts) still attractive. She had sharp if not striking features, including blue eyes, fair skin and black hair. Over the years she went through a number of different hair colours, a small concession to her own vanity while serving with the Brotherhood. Years of harsh living in the Mire, as well as active service in the Brotherhood, had left her with several scars, all of which she wore with pride. Equipment As a Brotherhood Knight, Jamie had access to a suit of Power Armour that had been acquired from pre-war stocks. Her particular suit was a battered old T-45d model that she referred to as the “rustbuket”. Despite its worn exterior, the suit was kept in good condition and was fully operational. The Rustbucket would survive her death, and remains where she fell as a quiet memorial. Years of practice with hunting rifles had made Jamie a skilled marksman, and as such her usual weapon was a Gauss Rifle, allowing her to take down even heavily armoured targets from a distance. Category:Brotherhood of Steel Category:Appalachia Category:Deceased Category:Free States